Treatment Options For Headaches

You may not be able to cure your headaches, but you sure can control them. There are many medications on the market today that can stop the pain of headaches or stop the symptoms, such...

You may not be able to cure your headaches, but you sure can control them. There are many medications on the market today that can stop the pain of headaches or stop the symptoms, such as nausea, that often accompany headaches.

The treatment for headaches involve many levels and pain medication is only one part of the treatment.

Other treatment levels include making life-style changes such as avoiding known triggers for your headaches, receiving personal or family counseling, stress management techniques, relaxation therapy are all different levels of treatment that can accompany the pain medication that your doctor prescribes for you.

Pain medications can be taken as a prophylactic (you take them everyday in order to reduce the severity or frequency of headaches), or you take the pain medication when the headache symptoms begin.

Prophylactic Pain Treatment:

If you have had several attacks of headaches in a month, your doctor may suggest prophylactic treatment for your headaches. Your doctor will need to monitor any side effects carefully from your prophylactic course of medication. Your doctor will monitor your weight gain, water retention, lethargy, memory impairment, and any hallucination that you may have. It is important that you not take any weight loss pills or drugs while taking prophylactic medications. It is important that you not stop taking your prophylactic medication suddenly or without a doctor’s advice.

Prophylactic treatment starts out with low doses, and the dose is slowly increased over time.

Your doctor will monitor to be sure that the medication is working periodically.

You should be certain that you are not pregnant before starting prophylactic treatment for headaches.

The medication will be tapered off once your headaches are under control.

It is unusual for anyone to be on prophylactic treatment for longer than 6 months.

Drug treatment:

Beta-blockers or calcium channel blockers and antidepressants have been used to treat tension, migraine, and sometimes cluster headaches.

Headaches are a medical condition just like having diabetes or high blood pressure and you do not have to go untreated.

Individuals who have emotional triggers for headaches can control them by making a point to include laughter somewhere in their day, hopefully liberally throughout the day, get short-term or long-term counseling to help you express your anger or learn tips on coping with stress or negative thoughts and feelings. Learn how to relax, really relax. It is actually a skill that you can conquer with practice. Relaxation decreases the muscle tension and increases the dilation of blood vessels, which results in less emotionally, triggered headaches.

Look into biofeedback therapy. This is a technique that involves relaxation and control of emotional triggers such as stress or anger. You place electrodes on the skin over specific muscles and slip a device over the finger so that body temperature changes can be detected. It is used to teach you how to release tension and to increase your blood flow on your own.

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